Mobile electronic devices such as mobile smart phones, electronic reading devices, e-book readers, and other portable electronics are usually equipped with a general purpose touch sensitive screen. Touch sensitive screens became a very popular application for portable mobile products and are used for various purposes due to the versatility of the on screen keyboard.
Before the generalized use of touch screens, most of the smart mobile devices implemented a physical keyboard that allowed the user to hold the device by touching on both, front and back device surfaces, with enough pressure to hold the device. The user was able to hold these devices by resting the thumbs on top of the keyboard while the index and middle fingers were generally positioned on the back of the mobile device. This type of device equipped with physical keyboard allows the user to excerpt enough amount of pressure on the portable device using the thumbs on the front surface and the index and middle fingers on the back surface to hold the mobile device but not yet enough pressure to activate any key on the physical keyboard.
However, new models of portable devices are equipped with a touch sensitive screen that generally covers the whole front surface of mobile device. Since the new devices are equipped with this full size touch sensitive screen it is not an option anymore to rest the user thumbs over the touch screen surface because any pressure of the fingers will activate keys on the onscreen keyboard.
Therefore the new touch sensitive screen technology also brought to mobile device users increasingly difficulties to hold the device while typing on it, because it is not possible anymore to hold the device in the same way users used to hold portable devices equipped with a physical keyboard.
For illustration the anatomic details of the typical position of the hand and fingers of a user while holding and typing on a mobile electronic device are shown in FIG. 10. As can be seen in this figure the users' thumbs are used for typing on the screen keyboard (see also FIG. 11). The touch sensitive keyboard usually takes half of the screen while the other part of the screen shows the text that the user is entering.
Therefore a need exists for a holding aid apparatus to hold the portable device that is specifically designed considering the anatomical and ergonomic aspects of the user hands and fingers while the user is typing on the touch sensitive screen surface of the portable device.
There are a variety of proposed holding devices to help the user to hold a small electronic device; however none of the holding devices were appropriately projected for holding and typing considering the anatomical and ergonomic aspects of holding the portable device and typing. The device described in this disclosure is intended to bridge this gap and is generally intended as a holding aid or apparatus specifically designed to hold the portable device while the user is using it and typing on the touch sensitive screen surface.